Get the weekly report

Frozen Planet

Extraordinary. Expansive. Epic. And frozen. Our own borders contain much of the planet’s most pristine and incredible natural habitats, but how much do we really know about the frozen north?

Or, to the other extreme, the beauty at the bottom of the world, Antarctica? Discover our FROZEN PLANET, premiering Sunday, March 18 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Discovery Channel in a special back-to-back presentation.

Four years in the making, this landmark seven-part series reveals the ultimate portrait of the Earth’s polar regions – in stunning high definition – where the scale and beauty of the scenery and sheer power of the natural elements are unlike anywhere else in the world.

A Discovery Channel/BBC co-production, Canadian viewers can experience this ambitious series in two uniquely distinctive ways. Discovery Channel and Discovery World HD will be offering two HD versions of the series: The Discovery Channel version – narrated by award-winning actor Alec Baldwin – premieres Sunday, March 18, then moves to its regular slot, Fridays at 8 p.m. ET/10 p.m. PT, beginning March 30; the BBC version – an alternate cut narrated by acclaimed natural history presenter Sir David Attenborough – premieres exclusively on Discovery World HD on Saturday, April 28 at 8 p.m. ET/10 p.m. PT (Please see box below for times, channels and versions.).

FROZEN PLANET reveals an astonishing world filled with more creatures, variety and spectacle than ever imagined – including the birth of an iceberg bigger than the largest building on Earth, a caterpillar with antifreeze in its veins, the greatest concentration of sea birds on the planet, and tiny baby polar bears – who at birth are 25% smaller than human babies. Never-before-filmed sequences will include the growth of a saltwater icicle (brinicle) that freezes everything it touches and orca whales working as a team to create killer waves that wash seals off ice floes.

To capture nature’s majestic power – as well as its ultimate fragility – FROZEN PLANET’s filmmakers utilized the latest cinematographic techniques and technology to capture groundbreaking imagery both above and below the ice in some of the most extreme and remote regions of the planet. Combined, the FROZEN PLANET team filmed in every nation inside the Arctic and Antarctic circles during a record 2,356 days in the field, including a year-and-a-half at sea and more than six months on the sea ice – with 134 hours beneath that ice – filming in the polar oceans. The production team worked alongside nearly every major polar institute, including NASA, BAS (British Antarctic Survey), USAP (United States Antarctic Program), PCSP (Polar Continental Shelf Project), UNIS (University Centre of Svalbard Norway), University of Fairbanks Alaska, IPEV – Institut Polaire Francais. The filmmakers worked with 150 scientific collaborators from 18 different nations.

The FROZEN PLANET team’s extreme efforts are profiled in an extraordinary “Making Of” episode. Other episodes provide an introduction to the poles and the elemental power of the weather and ocean there; how seasonal changes all year long impact landscape and wildlife alike; and how humans, pushed to the very edge of survival, adapt to this extreme environment. The series’ seventh episode, hosted on camera by British naturalist Sir David Attenborough, investigates what rising temperatures mean for the people and wildlife that live there – and for the rest of the planet.